


Scope

by toli-a (togina)



Category: Justified
Genre: Gen, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2019-01-15 09:12:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12318042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/toli-a
Summary: What’s the trick to something like that?What, to keeping your focus? Well, they told us to come up with stories about ourselves and the target.





	Scope

**Author's Note:**

> smthwrd prompted: "Boyd doing something genuinely good and NOT in any way profitable to him (standing up to the company men or whatever). Raylan’s reaction."
> 
> Quotes are from Tim and Raylan talking in episode 1:2 about Tim’s sniper career, and it got me thinking. Which is good, because I was having so much trouble with this, because of course Raylan’s seen Boyd being kind, he’s known Boyd their whole lives, but if you watch all that’s done is make Raylan _more_ suspicious of any altruism because - generally - Boyd is playing a con, even if it’s a long con, and even if it’s on himself. So his canon reaction is suspicion and disbelief, which you could either put down to knowing Boyd well or growing up with Arlo, or both.
> 
> This is more or less set at the end of the season 1 finale.

_What’s the trick to something like that?_

_What, to keeping your focus? Well, they told us to come up with stories about ourselves and the target._

_What do you mean, ‘stories’?_

 

Raylan sees Boyd coming out of the church, arms wide, belt buckle gleaming in the afternoon light.

Raylan sees Boyd coming down the steps of the Baptist church after Easter service, sixteen and too weedy for his suit jacket. He catches old Mrs. Harris by her elbow before she can trip over her cane and her shawl and go hat-first down the wooden stairs. Boyd smiles and simpers, goes real slow so she can hang onto his arm all the way to the front lawn and the clutch of old biddies selling cakes shaped like eggs. (Mr. Harris died ten years ago in a mining accident, and the money the company gave his widow to keep quiet is enough that homely, near-sighted Mrs. Harris has been courted by every eligible Harlan man over twenty-five. Of course Boyd would extend a hand to blind, rich old woman.) Raylan sees her pat Boyd on the cheek, hears her say, “Why thank you, Baxter. I always knew the Thompsons raised sweet boys.” Boyd says, “Thank you, ma’am, I’ll tell my mama just what you said,” and walks away, never mind that Boyd’s mama’s been dead nigh on two years.

 

Raylan hears Boyd preaching over a campfire, talking redemption and forgiveness to a bunch of ex-cons willing to live off canned beans and river water to hear those words.

Raylan hears Boyd preaching socialism and fair wages to a tired group of miners waiting to start their shifts, the coal helmet sitting cockeyed and too big for his head. They’re not even a month out of school, and Boyd Crowder’s throwing Harlan headfirst into the wildcat strikes running down the mountains from Pennsylvania, waving fists filled with promises that ain’t nothing but fire-dampened air. (Boyd ain’t the one who takes the fall, of course—a Crowder never does. Boyd’s somehow nowhere to be seen when the state police and the Marshals come in waving nightsticks and guns, and it sure as hell ain’t the first night Raylan’s spent swallowing down his own blood with handcuffs biting into his wrists.) Raylan hears Boyd get drunk and crow about breaking into the mine’s safe while the cops were busy breaking through the strike, watches him put all two grand in an envelope and mail it to the Daughters of Mother Jones keeping the real strike going in Virginia, has to steal back his own paycheck before Boyd mails that, too.

 

Raylan comes to the camp church and finds a graveyard, sees Boyd in his mind’s eye with grit in his eyes and blisters rubbed raw by the shovel in his hands. Eight graves. Must have taken all night. Raylan sees the pink patches on Boyd’s palms, ringed with black, where the blisters have worn off and the calluses are settling in. Coal miner’s hands. Raylan’s hands look the same way. Give it another year and they’ll never be able to wash out the black. Give it another twenty and the black will wash the oxygen right out of their lungs. Boyd’s hands are nothing but calluses and coal when the mine caves in, slick with sweat and gripping Raylan’s so tight that the bone fractures, that Raylan can still feel a storm coming along the lifeline of his hand. (Raylan owed Boyd twenty dollars from that week’s poker game, couldn’t pay up if he was dead. Boyd always has his reasons. It just takes Raylan longer to suss out the angle, sometimes.)

 

Raylan sees Boyd aim a gun at him, watches Boyd’s arm shake. It’s hardly the first time Boyd’s aimed a gun at Raylan. Ain’t even the first time this year. (Raylan sees Boyd’s hand tremble from the pain of being shot in the chest, holding off on the morphine until he can throw his new God in Raylan’s face. Sees Boyd’s jaw clench over his daddy’s murdering, then again over his corpse. Sees Boyd shaking with laughter and sparkling with moonshine up by the lake senior year, shaking with rage a few months later at the company’s men. Feels Boyd’s unsteady heartbeat pounding through sweaty fingers and into the throbbing ache of his own hand, two boys running for their lives.)

Raylan does what the government’s taught him: he raises his weapon; he aims to kill. And he doesn’t shoot.

 

_They eventually stopped that, the business with the stories._

_Why’s that?_

_They found some folks get so involved in the tales they’re telling themselves, they grow to like the target. And, when they got the green light, they couldn’t pull._


End file.
